Is SmartThings development dead?

Absolutely spot-on!

Anyone who has ever lived through an acquisition knows the first announcement is, “We anticipate no changes,” followed eventually by changes. Over time it becomes assimilate or perish.

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It’s called progress. Plain and simple.

Those that survive are the doers, the hands on guys, the ones that make it happen.

Any acquisition that isn’t immediately cut up and absolved is normally over time absorbed into the greater machine.

ST was bought because they were on to something. The big dogs jumped on the ship and now it begins to them.

And, if anyone is wondering who’s in charge… Follow the money trail… Who signs the checks?

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If only. :wink:

Acquisitions are made for many reasons. Sometimes it’s for the technology, sometimes it’s for the staff, sometimes it’s for the customer base, sometimes it’s for the name, and often these days it’s just for a year’s worth of buzz while you get your own products ready.

Just sayin’…

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ME, me…when I buy more things to make my home more awsome! The power of the consumer is that we can switch to other controllers on the spot, the big dogs cannot do anything to hold me…if I don’t want to and their name is not FIOS

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Two years is a critical juncture in my experience. Also, look at Nest. That’s when the bean counters have to make their verdict, whether their investment has paid off, or it’s time cut their losses. If the technology could not be taken form the concept phase to mass production within two years, it’s considered a failure. In consumer space, anyway. I said it many times that Samsung does not give a damn about a stand-alone hub. To them it’s just a proof of concept. Their game plan has always been to build this thechnology into their primary moneymakers - appliances and, most importantly, TVs. Read all their CES announcements. If SmartSmings does not deliver by the Chrismas shopping season, I’m afraid they will not get the second chance. :frowning:

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Well somebody better deliver something cause I’m gonna be poised if I to learn a new platform.

Alex took issue directly when I explained that things would change. And yet they did.

Regardless, he got his cash. He’s probably a good guy, but the leadership publicly is problematic. If nothing else, get a PR flack to put together info weekly and run it by him for approval and get the posting done. Communication is all this group of power users wants, good or bad news. And we in the community need to respect the communications and not jump all over them when it doesn’t suit our fancy.

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This is one of the reasons I purchased TiVo boxes earlier this year to work with FIOS. I simply pay Verizon $112 a month for Internet, phone and tv and get their cable card and use my own hardware. I was tired of “renting” their equipment indefinitely.

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Ah so now you just pay the rent to Tivo and Fios. I always wanted to get Tivo, but couldn’t really justify the jump.

I own the TiVo boxes and can sell them if I want. Eventually after my free year expires, I will pay TiVo $13 a month for their service just like SiriusXM, etc. I have the ability to switch to another cable provider and am not tied down to FIOS as well, although I love FIOS service and just got an awesome price for 2 years. The only way my plan backfires is if TiVo ends their service and their hardware becomes useless. Their technology is superior to cable boxes, (commercial skip is awesome!) and I love having the same interface on every tv with pretty much ever app available (plex, Netflix, you tube, HBO go, etc.). I have 5 tvs and 5 brands so smart tv OS is not appealing to me.

If you have at least three rooms with televisions, and you live in a market where they include live sports, we find the PlayStation Vue service really economical.

The package we have is $45 a month for up to five devices, so the three of us are paying $15 a month which is amazing.

It’s all streaming – – you don’t need any equipment if you already have a Roku or fire TV stick or a PlayStation 3 or 4. No contracts.

You get unlimited “DVR” recording although it’s all in the cloud and just about everything is available on demand anyway. The difference is that if it’s on DVR you can skip the commercials.

It has a lot of channels including animal planet, cartoon network, Comedy Central, FX, Spike, ESPN, USA, TNT, SyFy, stuff you wouldn’t expect.

And at least in our region live sports as well. But I understand that varies by where you live because they are doing it through contracts with local stations.

And you obviously need Broadband Internet

Anyway, if you only have one TV it might not be worth it, but once you get up to about three it’s hard to beat the value. :sunglasses:

The only bad thing is that your “DVR” recordings only last for 30 days. So if you’re somebody who keeps recording forever you have to find a way to transfer it to something else.

But if you’re just using your DVR to timeshift to more convenient time in the next two or three weeks, it works great. And of course a lot of stuff remains available on demand for longer.

They have a seven day free trial so it’s worth checking out if you already have one of the streaming devices it works with.

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What are we arguing that we want here? What developments do you want? Honestly the devices offered already pretty much cover the gambit for a good portion of the needs. Not to mention they don’t really do devices. So are we arguing that they should officially support more third party devices? Part of the ‘beauty’ of ST has been its ability for anyone to write a DTH for almost any device. Sure ‘official’ is nice but not totally needed.

So are we arguing for development of the hub? That I’d say yea we want. V2 has been a joke in terms of promises to reality. I am still running v1 because there are 0 reasons to change. The call for local processing is the major concern that we all should be championing. Not saying it’s the magic bullet but so much of the P/WAF comes down to speed and reliability. If I walk into my 6x6 laundry room and the light takes 3-5 seconds to turn on, that wouldn’t work for anyone but me. If you can go into a room, do what you need, and leave before the light turns on thats an issue.

I think the major development we ‘want’ is being done. Like said by @vlad and a few others backend is not sexy. New devices is. But I know that I have been dang near 100% stable here for months. I still have the zigbee (cree/osram) bug where you have >12 bulbs the network goes to shit. But I found a work around cause it seems no one cares to debug that issue. I hate that we forum users are in the minority and have smoke blown up our butts at times since we are the vocal minority. “The average ST user has <15 things”. When people like @bamarayne has 50 things in his bathroom alone. While we are outliers, we are treated as QA labs half the time. Then it feels like we are ignored because we are those outliers.

So in the last couple of months I have been happy with my setup. To the point I started buying devices again. I was ready to dump it and try another system, or just forgo the automation totally. I just say if you are getting fed up or tired of ST and it stagnating… Turn off your hub for a week. Take the challenge. Unplug it. I know I get pissed when I walk into my bathroom to realize I left the light on all afternoon. Or having to remember to turn off everything when I leave.

Is development dead? No… Marketing finally shut up with their ‘expectations’. But I do think Samsung has affected them in a negative way in terms of their culture. No more ‘scrappy startup’. But having to answer to corporate overlords can be good too. Just isnt sexy. I want them to build a Ford F-150. I don’t want them building a Tesla Roadster.

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Stability.
Local Processing

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Awesome! We have all aligned goals, now let’s watch how they do their magic…

Honestly, if stability is delivered, I don’t care what you call the fall back. Could be local or 3g. Call it what you want to, but after stability, reliability comes next. I am sure they have that word somewhere on the plan forward. If they give me a mobile card I won’t ask for local processing.

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I would agree, but I think latency is one issue that needs to be considered. Another might be what you may call platform ownership, although I don’t think that will every go away with ST regardless of local vs cloud processing.

Not my issue :slight_smile: Their headache…If lights come on after I walk through a room, then that’s a failure on the reliability part …

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Sure, consider that ST cannot control latency however. They don’t own the network end to end and never will.

In other words, the only way for ST to own and resolve latency issues for time critical controls is to process locally.

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I consider what I see, not what might happen…Life is short :slight_smile:

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I have 9 and would not look back!!! Best move I made. Now with their buyout I will let you know if that stays the same. I got all mine with lifetime so I am not paying anymore and all my TV have the same functionality as the others.

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Latency can also be a ISP problem. My Latency is between 5 to 11 ms most time. And when I push on or off it turns on or off. Or if I get lazy and ask echo to by the time it says ok or sooner its on or off.